Josh Kopelman

Managing Director of First Round Capital.

espite being coastally challenged (currently living in Philadelphia), Josh has been an active entrepreneur and investor in the Internet industry since its commercialization. In 1992, while he was a student at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, Josh co-founded Infonautics Corporation – an Internet information company. In 1996, Infonautics went public on the NASDAQ stock exchange.

Monthly Archives for 2010

At First
Round Capital, we build and deliver dozens of products, services and events to
our portfolio every year - and today I’m excited to announce our newest
experiment hackPR
entirely new way for press and startups to connect.

Through
building, investing and supporting over 200 companies, we've seen the
disconnect between reporters and startups countless times. Reporters are
constantly seeking interesting new people, companies and trends to cover – and
I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve been contacted by a reporter/blogger
asking me questions like “do you have any portfolio companies that have been
sued for patent infringement” or “what are some crazy things that startup
companies do to attract and retain good employees”. And startups are
always looking to connect with those same reporters. These two parties
often struggle to find each other and lack an efficient marketplace to connect.

hackPR is our attempt at creating a
marketplace between press and startups. By giving reporters the tools to
connect directly with companies and entrepreneurs, we hope to provide the means
for more in-depth journalism while helping startups gain additional PR
opportunities. Here's how we think it will work:

A
journalist will be able to send a request out to a range of startups based
on size, sector or location with just a few clicks. Their request
could range from anything like "I'm doing a piece on collaborative
consumption, what are the startups I should profile?" to "We're
doing a piece on college recruiting in startups - have any great stories
on how you won a candidate?"

Based on
profile data that startups will complete, the appropriate startups will be
able to respond.

If the
journalist is interested, a match will be made – and the responses will be
sent to the journalist

The
journalist will receive the contact information of the entrepreneur – and the reporter
can make the decision to reach out or not. (Since the startup will
not get the reporters contact information, the reporter will not get
spammed.)

This service will be available to any
venture backed startup – not just the First Round portfolio. Like most
marketplaces, scale matters and we think everyone will be better off if
it's an open platform.

This is not a
new idea – there are other similar services like Profnet (which charges
companies to participate) or HARO (which is not limited to startups). But
after using both of those services, I think there is real value that can be
delivered by creating a platform exclusively for venture backed startups and
the press that covers them…

We plan on launching the first
iteration of hackPR in December 2012 – but be sure to grab your place in line
as access will be opened very slowly to build the highest quality marketplace.
We'll be aggressively iterating on our product as we approach launch – so if
you're a startup or journalist, be sure to tell us what you'd like to see.

I strongly
encourage any interested reporters or entrepreneurs to sign up at www.hackpr.co today to gain early access
and help us beta test.